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The Theology of the Atonement:

Understanding the precise nature of Christ's atonement is, to the surprise of many, quite a difficult and obscure undertaking. It is a subject found in the deep recesses of patristic and medieval writings that rarely sees the light of day in current academia and RCIA classes. The subject is so profound that it took the best minds in Catholic theology centuries before they reached an adequate theological understanding concerning Christ's passion. Everyone knew ostensibly that Christ sacrificed His life on our behalf, but they were neither quite sure why God wanted it accomplished as it was, nor could they explain why He didn't chose, or couldn't have chosen, another way.

To answer the "why" of the atonement, some of the early Fathers entertained the "ransom theory" (Origen, Ambrose, Jerome). This was the concept wherein God was said to be required to pay a ransom to the devil, since the devil had won rights to the human race in the Garden of Eden. Even Augustine had one oblique reference to the theory.⁽³⁾ As happened with Eucharistic theology (which wasn't dogmatically defined until 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council), Atonement theology did not reach its theological plateau until the same time period. As Ludwig Ott states:

While the Fathers, in the explanation of Christ's work of sanctification, proceed more from the contemplation of the consequences of the Redemption, and therefore stress the negative side of the Redemption, namely, the ransoming from the slavery of sin and of the devil, St. Anselm proceeds from the contemplation of the guilt of sin. This, as an insult offered to God, is infinite, and therefore demands an infinite expiation."⁽⁴⁾

It was Anselm (d. 1109), in his major work, Cur Deus Homo ("Why the God-man?"), who gave us a more mature and precise understanding of the atonement - an understanding subsequently developed in the highly acclaimed Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1160), and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), and which was then connected intimately to the theology of the Mass by such medieval theologians as Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), Nicholas Cusa (d. 1464), John Gerson (d. 1429) and Denis Carthusian (d. 1471). As an aside, Peter Abelard (d. 1142) advanced the theory that the cross served primarily as a moral influence over men, wherein the cross demonstrated that God punishes evil and rewards good, but Abelard wasn't known for his orthodoxy.

It was Anselm's contention that "God owed nothing to the devil but punishment." Anselm's atonement theology begins from the guilt of sin. Sin is understood as an insult to God, a personal offense against Him. Because God is infinite, the sin is infinite, and "therefore demands an infinite expiation."⁽⁵⁾

Anselm also included God's honor in the understanding of the atonement. He stated: "...nothing is less tolerable...than that the creature should take away from the Creator the honor due to him, and not repay what he takes away....God upholds nothing more justly that he does the honor of his own dignity." As such, Christ's voluntary offering to the Father "outweighs the number and greatness of all sins, and thus due reparation has been made to God's offended honor."⁽⁶⁾

Thomas Aquinas developed the concept, adding that the atonement served as a means of appeasing God due to the sins of mankind, allowing Him to preserve His honor and justly relent of His wrath. Aquinas writes:

...the passion of Christ is the cause of our reconciliation with God in a two-fold manner: in one way because it takes away sin through which men are made enemies of God...In another way through its being a sacrifice most acceptable unto God, for this is properly the effect of a sacrifice that through it God is appeased, as even man is ready to forgive an injury done unto him by accepting a gift which is offered to him...And so in the same way, what Christ suffered was so great a good that, on account of that good found in human nature, God has been appeased over all the offenses of mankind.⁽⁷⁾

When we consider the severity of the sin of Adam and Eve - the magnitude of which can be measured by realizing that its punishment was nothing less than the plunging of the whole human race into death and damnation - we can better understand the necessity of Christ's brutal suffering to appease the Father's wrath. The reason Adam and Eve's sin was so horrible was that it essentially accused God of being the devil, and made out the devil as if he were God. By eating the forbidden fruit, they were saying that God was not who He claimed to be, but was an imposter who was lying to them about His plans. Instead, Adam and Eve chose the devil as the bearer of truth. In other words, they had completely reversed the roles of God and the devil. It was not unlike the sin of Pharisees who accused Jesus of performing miracles under the power of the devil rather than the Holy Spirit, which prompted Jesus to issue the curse of the "Unforgivable Sin" for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (cf., Mark 3:29-30). This was a supreme offense against God, an insult far beyond merely eating a piece of fruit. Only an equally supreme sacrifice could ever appease God's wrath and restore His honor among angels and men.

Gibson understood this on a basic level. He told Diane Sawyer on Primetime: "It's our belief that by the sin of the first people, original sin, that the gates were closed to us, to eternal life, and that his sacrifice as a redeemer of all mankind was to open the gates to all of us again." The only thing missing from Gibson's explanation is who God the Father really is, such that He would require so brutal a sacrifice from His own Son in order to have those gates opened once again. The usual answer is that Christ's suffering had to be so intense because of the intensity of our sins. But that is only half the story. The real truth is that God the Father would accept nothing less of a sacrifice since the appeasement of His wrath and preservation of His honor was at stake.

According to Scripture, God is a very personal Being. As such, He is personally offended by those who sin against Him. As St. Thomas said, this offense is analogous to the way human beings are offended and insulted through the malicious actions of others. If one reads Scripture at face value, one simply cannot miss the vivid language describing how intensely sin offends God. In the very first pages of the Bible we see this. Just prior to the Great Flood, Genesis 6:6-7 records:

The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thought of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth...for I am grieved that I have made them.

Here God is "grieved" and "His heart is filled with pain" over the sins of man. The most intense Hebrew verbs are used here.⁽⁸⁾ Whatever our theological persuasion regarding God's impassibility, we must at least agree that Scripture portrays Him as being emotively affected to the highest degree. Other Scriptures express the same truth. To King David who committed adultery and murder God interprets it as "you despised Me" (2 Sam 11:27; 12:10). King Saul's sin made "the Lord...grieved" (1 Sam 15:11,35; 1 Chr 21:15). To apostate Israel God says "you wearied me with your sins" (Is 43:24; 1:14; ), "you grieved His Holy Spirit" (Ps 78:40).

God tells Israel that because of their sins "My heart would not go out to you" (Jer 15:1,14), that Israel was "unfaithful to Me as a woman to her husband" (Jer 3:20; 5:7-9; 6:20). So offended was God by their sins that He says "do not plead with Me" (Jer 7:16; Ez 14:14, 20), "I have withdrawn My love and pity" (Jer 16:5), "You prefer strangers to your own Husband!"(Ez 16:32; Hos 2:2-13); "She roars at me, therefore I hate her" (Jer 12:8).

God's anger is described in the most realistic terms: "I declared on oath in My anger" (Ps 95:10-11; Heb 3:10-17; 4:3); "the Lord became exceedingly angry" (Num 11:1,10); "Do not provoke Me to anger" (Jer 25:6-7); "how long will they grumble against Me?" (Num 14:27); "you will know what it is like to have Me against you" (Num 14:34-35); "in furious anger and in great wrath the Lord uprooted them" (Deut 29:28; 32:19-21).

When God's wrath is unleashed, Scripture describes it as being "complete" or "spent," appearing as such over 100 times in the Old Testament. Ez 7:8 states: "I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you." Lam 4:11 records: "The Lord has given full vent to His wrath; he has poured out His fierce anger" (See also Neh 9:31; Is 10:23; Ez 5:13; 6:12; 13:15; 20:8, 21). This is matched by Scripture's vivid language describing God's utter "hatred" of evildoers (Ps 5:5; cf., 11:5; Pro 11:20; 12:22; 15:8-9, 26; 16:5; 20:23; Ecclus 12:6; 16:8; 17:26; 20:15; 27:24; 36:8-11; Jer 12:8; Mal 2:16; Rom 9:13; Apoc 2:6).

Added to this are the numerous references to God's "jealousy" (Ex 20:5; Deut 4:24; 5:9; 6:15), such that He actually calls His name "Jealous" (Ex 34:14; cf., Ez 39:25). Because of His jealousy He will not forgive certain sinners (Jos 24:19; Deut 29:20). He takes vengeance because of His jealousy (Nah 1:2). He is jealous against the foreign gods that Israel worships (Deut 32:21; Ps 78:58). In the same way, St. Paul says to New Testament Christians who sin that they "insult the Spirit" (Heb 10:30), and "grieve the Holy Spirit" (Eph 4:30), and this is because "the Spirit envies intensely" (James 4:5).

Suffice it to say, this is certainly a very dynamically personal God with whom we are dealing. This is not the ethereal and impersonal god of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam. This is a God who is so personal and "in your face," as it were, that it is absolutely frightening. Perhaps this is why Scripture says many times that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

The next question concerns what must be done to appease God when He is so offended. Scripture gives us the answer in bold and detailed narratives. One of the best examples is the incident of the Golden Calf recorded in Exodus 32-33. While Moses was up in the mount for forty days receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites decided to create their own god and worship it. The text tells us that God was so angry that He decided to obliterate the whole nation. Moses pleaded with Him to relent, reasoning with God as even Abraham had done over Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:22-33). Exodus 32:14 reveals that, in a moment of compassion for Moses, God "changed His mind" about destroying Israel. But what Exodus 32 doesn't tell us is what else Moses had to do in order to get God even to listen to his pleas. Deut 9:18-21 adds that Moses had to lie prostrate on the ground for forty days with no food or water. That is what you call appeasement.

Moreover, although God relented, still, the insult from the sin was not completely healed. Exodus 33:1-5 tells us that God, because He thought He still might destroy the Israelites in His anger, decided not to go with them through the desert to Canaan. Moses pleaded with God and, because of the love He had for Moses, He changed His mind again.

It is from this very context that St. Paul, in Romans 9, draws his teachings about the God who "has mercy upon whom he has mercy, and hardens whom he hardens." Only because of Moses - a type of Christ - was God appeased enough and His honor preserved so that He could give mercy to Israel. God's mercy is neither automatic nor cheap. A huge sacrifice must be made to move Him. This is precisely why Our Lady told the Fatima children: "Many people go to hell because they have no one to sacrifice for them." And when God is so moved by sacrifice, His blessings cascade above all we ask or think.

We could easily multiply examples of the appeasement motif in Scripture. Another outstanding example of how highly God regards His honor is recorded in Numbers 25. Another is 1 Chronicles 21:1-27. Read those at your leisure. Suffice it to say that when Isaiah 53:5-12 and 1 Peter 2:24 say that Christ was "beaten for our iniquities; wounded for our transgressions; and by his wounds we are healed" (the very answer that Mel Gibson gave to Diane Sawyer as to why his movie had to be so graphic), it is precisely for the purpose of appeasing the wrath of God and preserving His honor because of the horrible insult of sin against Him. Isaiah confirms this for us as he concludes Isaiah 53, words that, because I know their full theological impact, I cry over every time I read them:

Yet it was the Lord's [God the Father] will to crush him [Christ] and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering...After the suffering of His [Christ's] soul, He [God] will see the result of the suffering of His soul and be satisfied...For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.⁽⁹⁾

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